ART was dead.
I wanted to stop and lean my head against the bulkhead, but there was no time.
Behind me, my drones saw Eletra had an arm around Amena’s waist, helping her walk. Ras limped, too, trying to watch behind us and keep an eye on me at the same time. All three were either shivering or sweating from what was probably shock.
Right. Humans. Humans with needs. Mensah’s juvenile human, and the two new humans who were obviously hurt.
Murderbot, you need to get your act together.
“Do you know how many Targets are aboard?” I said.
“Targets?” Ras repeated.
“It means the gray people,” Amena said, gritting her teeth as she put weight on her bad leg.
“I’ve seen five, but I don’t know if that’s all,” Eletra said.
“At least five,” Ras agreed. “They had a lot of those bots, drones, whatever they are. We should try to get to the engineering module. Tell your SecUnit—”
“It doesn’t listen to me, I told you,” Amena said, exasperated.
I’d already identified six total Targets, with three still active (counting the messily dead ones), so the humans’ intel was useless. (Not a surprise.) I arranged the drone scouts in front of us into a cloud formation and sent them ahead with their scan functions tuned all the way up.
Scout Two showed me that Targets Four, Five, and Six had stopped ineffectually poking at the hatch. They were hastily adjusting their protective suits, sliding plates reconfiguring their helmets to cover their whole heads. That was a problem. Seven drones to kill two Targets had been overkill (Though one Target had already been wounded. Say seven to kill one and a half Targets.) especially when my supply of drones was limited. I had no real intel on how good their armor was at deflecting drones, and trying to find out might mean wasting another squad.
I needed the drones as an early warning system for the targetDrones, which with targetControlSystem, might be a much worse threat than the squishy Targets. Plus three of my drones scouting in the main section near ART’s control area had disappeared in the last ninety-seven seconds, which meant they had encountered stealth targetDrones. I was losing my eyes in the rest of the ship and that was really not an ideal situation. It sucked, basically. Even my risk assessment module thought so, and I knew what its opinion was worth.
We reached the hatch into the quarters section and I stepped to the side to let the humans through, then hit the manual release. The hatch slid shut and I pulled the panel, then used the energy weapon in my right arm to melt a couple of key components.
Behind me, this was going on:
“Why is it doing that?” Ras asked Amena.
She stared blankly at him, then said, “SecUnit, why are you doing that?”
Checking ART’s schematic had let me pick a couple of access points. I could close off the living section—containing the quarters, medical, galley, classrooms, and crew lounges—from the rest of the ship by sealing two more hatches. It wasn’t the best choice, but trying to cross over to engineering or the lab module wasn’t feasible at the moment, and the humans would need the supplies here. I was betting the targetDrones had no arm extensions to repair the hatches. The Targets themselves could, but I’d have warning and time to get there first. (And the Targets could get to us via an outer hatch, but they’d have to take the EVAC suits out across the hull while we were in the wormhole and from what I’d seen in the entertainment media, that was a bad idea.) “I’m trying to create a safe zone.”
Amena turned to Ras and said, “It’s trying to create a safe zone.”
As he looked from her to me and back again, I stepped past and started down the passage. Then three drones in my scout formation winked out of existence at the corridor junction ahead. I threw myself forward, rolled into the junction, and shot the two targetDrones waiting there with my left arm energy weapon. One dropped to the deck, the second wobbled in the air. I came to my feet and smashed it against the bulkhead.
My drone Scout Two in the control area foyer recorded the Targets pounding on the sealed hatch again. Did they think we—or someone—was inside? They weren’t using translators with each other and I couldn’t understand what they were saying.
I told my drone cloud to continue down the corridor toward the medical suite to make sure it was clear. I told the humans, “Hurry.” None of them argued, and they limped after me rapidly.
Down two corridors, then a turn and we were there. The MedSystem’s platform was quiet and powered down, the surgical system folded up into the ceiling, no sign of the medical drones. It was weird (not bad weird, just weird) seeing this place again. This was where ART had made the changes to my configuration, to help me pass as a human, where it had saved my client Tapan.
Ugh, emotions.
I checked the space, scanning the restroom and shower compartment, the morgue, and the other enclosed areas to make sure there weren’t targetDrones, Targets, or any other as yet unknown hostile lurking. The humans stood in the middle of the room, watching me anxiously.
I finished my sweep, told them, “Stay here.” I left one drone to keep my feed relay with Amena active and walked out, shutting the hatch behind me.
I sent my drone cloud ahead and sprinted after it, heading toward the hatch at the opposite end of the module. If the Targets had figured out what I was doing, this was the closest hatch to the control area foyer where they were still gathered.
As I reached the hatch I needed to seal, I risked a look down the short module passage into the next section. My organic nerve tissue detected movement and I hit the hatch release to shut it. I sealed the manual controls, left a drone sentry, and took off for the last hatch.
Inside the medical suite, the humans were still huddled together. Eletra whispered, “Can you tell what it’s doing?”
Amena said, “It’s sealing the hatches, like it said it would.”
Ras looked frustrated and impatient, but didn’t argue.
The third hatch led to a connecting section which was a secondary pathway into the engineering module. This hatch was already closed and sealed, but I fused the manual control anyway. I’d lost all but four drone scouts in the rest of the ship: one (Scout One) was still locked in the control meeting area with the two dead Targets. Scout Two was in the foyer ceiling watching the Targets gathered at the sealed hatch, and Three and Four had tucked themselves up under supporting rib structures in nearby corridors.
I started back toward Medical, letting my surviving drone cloud spread out a little more. Bits of me hurt enough that I needed to tune down my pain sensors.
At the Medical corridor, I split my drones into two squads and positioned them at opposite ends of the access. I needed to clear this section and make sure I hadn’t trapped us in here with anything, but there were things I needed/wanted to know first.
When I stepped inside, Ras said, “What’s going on?” He glanced at Amena, still unsure who to talk to. “Are we safe here?”
I knew ART’s normal crew size; the command crew alone was at least eight members, with a rotating complement of instructors and students. I knew from my brief sweep that there was no sign anyone had been treated in the medical suite recently, no dead humans in cold storage. Which was good, except that the bodies could have been spaced. I knew how ART would have felt about that.